Flo's Weekender: To The Lighthouse

A couple of weeks ago I booked a last minute break in St Ives. It is a long way from London but I was able to do the bulk of the travelling early enough on Friday to have a nice evening wander and meal before the weekend began. We actually stayed a five minute train ride away from St Ives, in Carbis Bay where the beaches are beautiful and good degree emptier than those in St Ives. Our hotel was comfortable enough but not one I would really recommend, since there were few options by the time we booked and we saw much more picturesque accommodation on our way.

St Ives was as charming and twee as ever but a lot more crowded than when I last visited many years ago for a New Year's Eve party. The sea gulls have also developed an aggressive appetite for ice cream and regularly swoop down to opportunely swipe the whole thing, cone and all from unsuspecting tourists. That aside the sea, sand, cliffs and wildlife were wonderful!

After I returned from my trip I realised that big sister Elle had also been to St Ives and reviewed it here. I knew she had been to the Cornish Coast but I hadn't realised quite how much our trips had overlapped. I wrote my review without having looked at hers and it is funny how we reach exactly the same conclusions, especially with regard to Porthmeor Beach Cafe, which was the best meal we had too.

Over the two days our food was pretty hit and miss, we started off well at Blas Burger. Not your typical seaside meal, this new burger joint serves absolutely scrumptious burgers with exciting toppings such as truffle mayonnaise, mushroom and spinach. Their chips and aioli were also perfection with just the right degree of outside crisp and inside fluffiness, and with a good level of heat retention too.

The next day we went to their sister restaurant, the Halsetown Inn, which is a lovely half hour countryside walk away  from St Ives. It grieves me to say that the food was pretty ill-conceived at times, although the owner was so friendly that it almost didn't matter. The crab salad however was nicely meaty and rich with a good measure of brown meat in it (though obviously not as good as yours truly's, recipe here). There was also a good selection of ciders and ales, so it is still worth taking a nice walk there, passing through enchanted looking fields of white horses and a cosy little village.

Luckily before we left for the Inn we had already eaten well. We wanted to sample the infamous Beck's fish and chips right by our hotel in Carbis bay so shared what can only be described as a massive 'small' portion of fish and chips. We went for the haddock and it was gloriously fresh out of the ocean with succulent flakes of soft white meat.

For dinner we went to Sea Food Cafe which was booked out until 9pm  and had been recommended to us. We had the skate wing in caper and burnt butter sauce, a favourite of mine but it turned out pretty badly. I would definitely give this place the benefit of the doubt and say they had a momentary slip since the service was excellent and it is clearly very popular. We topped off the day with cream tea at The Tea Room which was really, really good and served Tregothnan tea grown in Cornwall. So delicious I had to buy some tea and scones to take home! 

The Tea room is on the harbour, 100 metres down from the Sloop, a legendary smuggler's pub which despite its tourism credentials continues to host a crowd of what sounded like locals and sell good cheap Cornish brew! We finished the evening there, watching the sun set.

The day was spent walking along the coast and in the Barbara Hepworth sculpture garden (free entry with Tate members card, ka-ching!) It is a really lovely place to visit and see a lot of her work together. I particularly love the smoothed wooden sculptures she makes, full of holes at perpendicular angles like hag stones.

This was complemented the next day at the Tate in St Ives where there is a currently a Barbara Hepworth and room with a panoramic sea view behind it. 

After that we ventured up the cliffs and played mini golf for the bargain price of £2.50 each (straight along the coast, left out of the Tate.) Despite my embarrassing lack of finesse it was a good laugh and had such an incredible view that neither of us cared if the other spent ages trying to find their ball again in a ditch!

We finished off our time with a celebratory meal at the Porthmeor Beach Cafe where we had the best food yet, namely a spectacularly well thought out battered monk fish fillet with a caramel, minty pineapple salad. This was one of those dishes where you just have to eat it to understand its glory. Other than that we had a fish burger - a lightly battered fish fillet in a burger with delicious homemade tartare sauce, an aubergine, pomegranate, basil and saffron yoghurt salad, Harissa mackerel and chips. Lots of deep frying but all delicious. The restaurant itself has the ideal view and lovely cool alcoves where you can escape from the heat. 

I never actually made it to the lighthouse, despite my love of Woolf!

P&B: Stands for Porn & Burger right??

If Patty and Bun aren't already on your radar, you're probably vegetarian. This James Street phenomenon is old news, we've seen the burger porn already but here's a little more for your viewing pleasure.

I don't have much to say other than, it's true: they really are very good. I have two teeny tiny pieces of advice that may make your experience marginally better than it's already guaranteed to be: 1. Get yourself some mini G&Ts to have in the queue (it's long), 2. Get the chicken wing sides as well as your burger, not because you're going to go hungry but you know...

Sat down at last, G&Ts swiftly polished off... 

In come the burgers... I'm a sucker for paper wrapping and the nostalgia it brings. I know it's a gimmick but I don't care.

Uuuhhh

Go. The end.
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The Grain Store

The Grain Store is the newest addition to Kings Cross's latest gastro bevvy fest overlooking Granary Square. By far the best new London opening I've been to this year, in a gorgeous setting and a relaxed environment. Book now before it fills up.

The first thing I noticed (naturally) was the cocktail list. Sergio - the head bar tender is ex Riding House Cafe. He makes his own spirits, is a master of his art and will recommend you a drink you actually want to drink. I was very overexcited to see an entire list dedicated to savoury drinks - these being my favourite kind. Overwhelmed by choice, where I'm usually drawn to one thing or just order a dirty gin martini - I decided that i'd have to try a few... I started out with the Toasted butter and hay champagne and immediately fell in love. My partner in crime chose the Campari and Grapefruit Spritz which was also a gorgeous summery drink - a little sweeter, but just as subtle.

Grain Store has two types of bread for you to choose from before you begin. I don't usually go in for pre-dinner bread as I find it ruins my appetite, but in this instance could not resist the sound of onion baked bread with creme fraiche butter. So good.

We asked whether we could move to a table outside for the main course, which was smoothly arranged to our surprise. The view onto children playing in Granary Square added to the relaxed atmosphere from inside. By this point, we were both blissing out. Then the starters arrived. Likelihood is you've never tried prawn falafel before - neither had we - probably, because Grain Store invented it. These balls of loveliness coated in sesame seeds set a high standard. The chicken skins on quioa were equally delicious and light. My advice would be to order a few things as you won't walk away holding your belly - the food is healthy (mostly) and subtly flavoured, complemented by the drinks.

For main courses, we opted for sticky pork belly with blackened baked corn in molasses... yum, and blackened quail on a pistachio and green bean salad. The pictures can speak for themselves.

Grain Store have also concepted a secret 5 course menu as part of what (I'm sure) they'll fast become famous for. Being stickler for quality and not knowing what I was in for, I didn't order it this time around but would immediately opt to put my tastebuds in their safe hands next time around. 

Of course at the end, I had to come back to the cocktail list for pud... it's not every day drinks this good are on tap. This Milky Velvet is like everything good about drinking champagne with everything good about drinking Guinness. You'll either get that or you won't but if you're anything like me, this is heaven.

Gordon's

It's a little known fact that Gordon's Wine Bar is the oldest wine bar in London. Tucked away in an unlikely location round the back of Embankment, this secret remains well kept. There are few reasons to be on this part of the river unless you're a tourist. From a dirty chain filled street, you open a small wrought iron gate into a passageway. Green umbrellas shade tables (old wine barrels) - this is Gordon's Grill - a more appropriate summertime venue perhaps but nothing on the winebar below. Few things can entice me to step out of bright sunshine and sit downstairs on a sunny Sunday but Gordon's is one of them.

Gordon's was established in 1890 as a wine bar, but the Gordon's family had a busy wine business for an entire century before then. This is no faux Victoriana copy, this is the real deal. You can only order wine, of which they have a fantastic selection of regulars and a rotating array of new things to sample too. I always ask the bartender for the kind of thing I'm looking for in the hope of getting introduced to new stuff. This time round, my creamy white burgundy did not disappoint. Delicious through and through.

Tables are laid out under stone arches, the environment is cool, dimly lit and peppered with candles even in the middle of the day. It's so romantic in the winter - take a date, wrap up warm and find a quiet corner to take your bottle to for an unusual and romantic date.

Market-Fresh Crab Salad

Sometimes there is nothing better than a beautiful, zingy, fresh crab salad. This one is really good, even if I do say so myself. I buy the crab already cooked from the fish stall at the Saturday Farmers Market in Parliament Hill where they are around £6 for a really big one. You can buy them already dressed but there is a mark up and I personally love getting every last bit of meat out of them, and bashing them about in the kitchen!

If you too are going to prepare your own crab, you will need some newspaper, a big heavy cleaver, and a skewer, as well as a sieve  3 bowls (one for white meat, one for brown and one to sieve the brown meat into) and a bag to put all your rubbish in.

First twist all the legs of and put aside to deal with later.

Next, bash the crab's back a few times on a hard surface until you can pull out the central leg socket bit. Remove the dead man's fingers from it. Now, this but has lots of delicious, flaky meat that you can ease out with your fingers or with a skewer. This is easier on a large crab where the fleshy pockets are larger. If its smaller, neatly cleave the thing in two and work from there, being careful not to put any cartilage in with the meat.

dead man's fingers

Now remove the squiggly white intestines and stomach from the main shell and then scoop out all the brown meat and crab shell wet, white meat into a bowl and sieve.

Now set to work on the claws and legs, cleaving them open and pushing out the meat with a skewer.

Finally check all the meat for bits of shell with your hands.

Ingredients (serves 3)
1 large crab (prepared for you if you don't want to get your hands dirty - I personally do)

1 fennel bulb
Juice of 1 lemon
2 handfuls of coriander
2 tablespoons of mayonnaise
1 tablespoon of fennel or carraway seeds
A handful of cherry tomatoes
3 small handfuls of young salad leaves
Salt and pepper

Firstly, slice your fennel super finely, ideally with a mandolin setting on a food processor, otherwise a mandolin will do but take much more time. Slice your cherry tomatoes in 4.

Next, chop your herbs finely and place in a bowl with the white crab meat, tomatoes, fennel and 2 tablespoons of the brown meat. Add the mayonnaise, seeds, half the lemon juice, salt and pepper. Mix it all up, taste, and add more seasoning and more lemon juice to a level you are happy with.

Dress the salad leaves with a squidge of lemon juice, olive oil and salt. Make beds of it on the plates. Push your crab salad into a mold and turn out onto the salad. Serve with some nice toasted bread.

Black Miso Cured Cod

A year or so ago I had an inspiringly delicious meal at Australasia in Manchester. It was so good that I emailed the head chef on a whim, begging for their black cod recipe. Much to my surprise and gratitude, they kindly obliged.

I have been meaning to try it out for a while but since the ingredients are both slightly far fetched and expensive, I have been waiting for the right opportunity. The perfect occasion recently arose when I decided to treat my mum and cousins to a proper dinner party.

Black cod isn't the cheapest of ingredients at around £7 per head, but, like a few inimitable culinary treasures, it most certainly is worth it. Black cod live deep down in the ocean, deeper than regular cod and therefore have much fattier meat to insulate them. This makes them harder to fish but delicious to eat with a texture somewhere between regular cod and hot, melty bone marrow.

The simple recipe below provides a deep, salty, caramel flavour base for the cod to melt into - paradise on a plate!

Ingredients:
125g per person black cod
30g per person miso
30ml per person mirin
20g per person sugar (the restaurant uses palm sugar but that can be disastrous if you get the wrong one, so I stick to sugar)

First mix your mirin into the miso slowly, splash by splash. Next mix in the sugar and heat until dissolved and slightly reduced to a thicker syrupy texture akin to maple syrup rather than golden syrup.

Allow to cool completely then pour over your fish and MARINATE FOR 3 - 6 HOURS. (I have capitalized that because I often start doing a recipe before realising that the time scale isn't right for what I want)

After the fish has marinated for long enough, preheat the oven to 200 degrees Celsius. Shake off any excess marinade and place the fish in the oven for 8 minutes before checking. It should take 8-12minutes but remember that it continues cooking for a while after you have taken it out if the oven. Really you want to be able to prize one flake of fish away from another with relative but not too much ease.

Serve on an aspidistra leaves, neatly curled over the fish in a large loop. You can get the leaves from china town or, at vast expense (£1 per leaf) from a specialist florist. While it doesn't add any flavour and is purely for presentation, I believe that eating off a leaf has a psychological effect and set of associations that may well add to the experience.

We served it with sake and ginger infused sushi rice, miso soup made with proper nori stock. Soya doused spinach and Japanese cucumber pickle (see Everyday Harumi recipes).

For pudding I was uncharacteristically lazy and bought delicious blood orange and chocolate sorbets from Gelupo, complete with cones for an extra bit of fun.